Living with a Working Writer

Archive for October, 2007

Talked to My Ruthie yesterday and there’s a lot happening in her life! Her daughter (our god-daughter) is growing up, and she is her mother made over. So — boundary stretching, breaking, and re-sizing is happening…very difficult stuff, regardless of our age and station.

Isn’t is fascinating the importance our mothers have in our lives. Just last night at dinner, we talked about another relative and her growing-up stories: mom-abandoned, she became the surrogate parent in her alcoholic father’s absence, and she still is. Mom is “back” now that all kids are grown and don’t need her, except we all always need our mothers…

“They” say we are our mothers, we marry our mothers, and we become our mothers. What dangerous, treacherous waters those are!

My mom died in 1989… after 6 months, I entered therapy and took another 6 months to begin to deal with her influences and her passing. We had, to say the least, a “troubled” relationship frought with her menopause, my teen hormonal surges, our Electra conflicts, and her chronic depression. My poor mother was such a sad person, so unhappy, so dissatisfied. What she left me with was an utter commitment to not be her, but of course I am, much more so that I’d wish for. So, I work on being happy (well, most of the time); optimistic (pretty good at this one, sometimes too good!); and grateful.

Growing never stops…we keep at it as long as we’re breathing. Another legacy of our humanity, I suppose. So we push at boundaries, and sometimes they push back. We stretch our behaviors and sometimes get smacked for our efforts. And, we work at re-sizing our worlds, becoming more inclusive, adopting new behaviors, attitudes, feelings, and norms. My lovely god-daughter’s experience mimics what us adults do every day — it always feels very personal, whether we’re 13 or 53….

Today I am grateful for so many things . . . that Ruth and Bill & kids are part of our world, that my mom (in-law) is well enough and strong enough to travel to CA for a month with family there, that we have a loving extended family and family-of-choice. Grateful for our upcoming weekend in Mobile with Barry & Georgia at the Greek Fest. Grateful for the low stress levels in our lives right now. And, of course, grateful that I got my NEH grant finished a whole 2 days ahead of its due date!

I joined my high school site at Classmates.com a few months back, just to see who’s still alive and what’s happening. Not that I liked high school or ever want to go back there — that seems clear enough when I sold the farm I grew up on after years of being “away” from there. But there is still a pull, a desire to stay connected in some small and pretty anonymous way to that place and those people . . . the same way a kid wants to grow up, can’t wait to be grown enough to get away from his family, then moves in next door to work and raise his own kids…see how far I “ran away?” 30 miles that seems like a million sometimes and some days not far enough . . .

Well, it really has been weeks since I’ve written, but I claim busy-ness as my excuse. I’ve been working on a big grant at work — actually more than one — and there was that weekend at Dauphin Island that my husband wrote so beautifully about. And there have been Thursday concerts in the park downtown at lunchtime and Friday evening suppers with our family and friends. It’s been a grand few weeks, but busy!

Ron’s writing continues to be slow….he’s gotten a few qualified “no thanks” to his query packet, a good number of very nice comments along with the “no thanks.” He’s got one “maybe” outstanding now and a lot of silence. He’s working now on getting email out to folks from whom he’s heard nothing. We’re hoping for a few bites soon! In the meantime, he’s working on articles for the stockpile so that when things do hit, he’s ready with some things “in the can” and ready to go. And there’s the project with Georgia down in Mobile and the Audubon Big Sit coming up at the end of October and the Audubon Junior Birders program and . . . you get the picture.

Busy….

I got the bottle tree up and that’s my real accomplishment for this week. See picture. Send me pictures of yours…..